


how long can anyone try

by kvetching



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Canon Era, Fluff, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvetching/pseuds/kvetching
Summary: "You're not just an ill-starred sorcerer who only knows a few cleaning spells, are you," Arthur said dully.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 937
Collections: Emotionally constipated people have Feelings too





	how long can anyone try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [microcomets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/microcomets/gifts).



> with thanks and love to my muse/enabler, @mishcollin—here is some unrepentant April Fools' Day GIBBERISH, set in a fluffy cracky alternate season 1.
> 
> title courtesy of that ole classic Something's Gotta Give. stock disclaimers: characters not mine, please don't sue me, please don't post elsewhere, etc. if you like it, or if you don't, drop me a line in the comments! :)

Arthur was staring at him with the usual face—that annoyed, assessing, and even sort of concerned blue-eyed squint.

"You could _burst into flames,_ " he said finally.

"I mean, I don't know," Merlin said. "It does seem rather an outside possibility, but it's, you know. A possibility."

Arthur sat down heavily in one of the chairs at the table, and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. "Are you actually, honestly an idiot?" he asked.

"I was gathering herbs and I got hit with some two-bit sorcerer's wayward spell, how's that my fault! And anyway, _you've_ been cursed at least as many times as I have."

"Yes, but I'm a prince! Everyone wants to curse me! You're just—" Arthur made a vague gesture at Merlin's entire person— "I don't know why anyone would bother to cast a spell on you. It's like you go out of your way to attract trouble."

"Maybe we can spare the lecture for later," Merlin said, bouncing on his feet a little. Arthur's diatribes tended to follow a pattern, and it was best to head them off at the pass early, if you were to have any hope at all of stopping them. "My, er, possible imminent demise is rather time-sensitive. A bit sensitive in general, I suppose, which brings me to my question."

Arthur waved a hand like, _go on,_ but did not deign to speak.

Merlin inhaled, and then said, all on a breath, "I've got to be tied up and closely observed and guarded from everyone in the castle."

"You actually have lost your mind this time, haven't you," Arthur said after a moment. Merlin was possibly imagining the anxious tint in Arthur's searching gaze, but also, very possibly not. He tried to stamp down any thrill he was feeling. Sensitive situation, and all.

"Well, if I _do_ burst into flames, I ought to be somewhere I'm not putting anyone else in danger," Merlin said. "And if I don't, er, well. I'm not sure I'll be totally out of my head, I'm not sure what's going to happen at all, really, but I don't want to do anything I'll regret, or that someone else will regret, or—"

"I understand," Arthur said tightly. "Tell me the side effects of this botched spell, again."

"The flames, of course," Merlin said.

"Of course."

"Then, let's see." Merlin counted them off on his fingers. "With a really bad botch job, like this bloke's, there can be excessive sweating, reflexive night screaming, compulsive cleaning—"

" _That'll_ be the day," Arthur muttered darkly.

"—elevated bloodlust, a case of wobbly legs, which I had on the way over here already, and then there's, well, the love spell byproduct, which'll affect myself and whoever's nearest to me when it hits."

"The love spell?" Arthur's voice cracked horribly, Merlin surely hadn't imagined it.

"Temporary, of course, and I shouldn't think very strong," Merlin explained. "Magic can't keep a long hold on free will, even powerful magic."

Arthur raised one lovely eyebrow. "I thought you told me you didn't know a thing about any of this stuff," he said.

"Oh, I don't," Merlin said. "I mean, I guess I do, just not, you know, in practical application, obviously, of course."

Arthur grimaced. "You're not just an ill-starred sorcerer who only knows a few cleaning spells, are you," he said dully. "No, don't tell me any more, you absolute pillock, at least one of us ought to maintain our innocence."

Merlin's heart swelled a little with appreciation and, horribly, love. Arthur was, of course, a complete brute and a total bastard, but to Merlin's excessive mortification he was also wonderfully caring and loyal and brave and strong, and when he'd caught Merlin with magic he'd actually waited to let Merlin explain himself, and took him at his word, even though he hadn't any reason to do so. It was months ago, and they'd barely known each other then, and it was stiflingly awkward and terrifying for weeks, but now it was nice: Arthur would protect him just like he was protecting Arthur.

"The point is," Merlin said, clearing his throat, "I need to be tied up."

Arthur went faintly pink. "Right."

"Soon," Merlin said urgently, "so, if you could fetch someone?"

Arthur shook his head. "I'll do it," he said, standing up. He didn't look happy about the prospect.

"Er, right, yeah, I didn't mean that I was asking you, actually," Merlin said. He didn't mean to be disrespectful, it was just, well, he hadn't been. Arthur needed to be protected, after all.

"It has to be me," Arthur said. "You've got to be protected, and so does the rest of the castle, and I'm the only person for it."

"I rather think it should be anyone _but_ you," Merlin said. "Seeing as you're the crown prince, wouldn't it only make sense that you—"

"No, obviously not." Arthur kept swallowing and looking at the ceiling and his face was beginning to take on a rather sickly hue. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and then flexed, and then he crossed his arms entirely, almost like he was hugging himself. Merlin had literally never seen him like this. It would have been amazing and hilarious, except instead it was kind of unsettling. Merlin fervently wished he'd go back to being a git. "It'll be me. I have to, I ought to."

Merlin frowned. "No one said you _have_ to."

"Who else is it going to be!" Arthur sounded like the picture of misery, but at least he was looking at Merlin now, and the look in his eyes was—strange and glittering and hard to read, Merlin decided, but at least better than no eye contact at all. There was a sharp silence for a moment, and then Arthur seemed to come back to himself a little. "Believe me, Merlin, I'm equipped to resist your bloodlust and your—your love spells, and anyway, I'm trained and armed. You're lucky I haven't got anything better to do today."

"The knights are trained and armed too," Merlin pointed out.

Arthur scowled. "I'm hardly going to foist you off on one of my knights. I wouldn't ask it of any one of them."

"Sir Eric promised to do whatever I needed while he was escorting me from the woods with my wobbly legs," Merlin offered.

" _Did_ he," said Arthur, and his scowl deepened.

"If you're really this bloody determined to be a hero," Merlin said, "then fine, you win, and you've got about ten minutes before I possibly become a lunatic."

•

When Arthur was younger, one of his tutors (a wry, dark-haired, handsome scholar named Daniel, for whom Arthur had become an unrepentant swot) was in the habit of reading to him from one of Geoffrey's less-savory tomes on Spartan military and political history. Half the accounts were either obviously false or grossly embellished, which was probably why Geoffrey didn't seem to worry that the book occasionally disappeared from his collection, but Arthur didn't care. It bewitched his imagination. There was one story, in particular, of a cunning commander who learned that one of his enemies meant to poison him with snake venom. The commander began to take small doses of snake venom every morning, and gradually worked it up to larger and larger doses, until he had become completely immune, and his would-be assassin's plans were thus foiled.

Arthur had tried very hard to apply this technique to his infatuation with Merlin, which he knew with grim certainty was going to end in catastrophe even deadlier than snakes. He'd thought to build up a tolerance. He'd let Merlin near him, always, and resisted the urge to look away from him, and let Merlin touch him in all sorts of horribly intimate but never inappropriate ways. He'd thought the science would be exact. One day he'd develop an immunity, and just like that, he wouldn't fancy Merlin anymore, and he'd be cured, and life could move on with minimal humiliation for everyone involved.

In actual fact, it had the opposite effect, which Arthur only realized too late. The more time he spent with Merlin, and the more he learned and saw of Merlin's face and manner and heart, the more reprehensibly soft he felt. It was wretched, it was vile torture. And it was more wretched because Merlin seemed really not to know what he was doing at all; his moments of tenderness were unplanned and artless and honest, and all the more vexing for being so. No one looked at Arthur like he did, no one had ever bothered to know so much about him, not his knights, not Morgana, not even his father. If Arthur was acting a prat or being perfectly noble, Merlin looked at him just the same; not like he was a bully or a prince, just like he was someone Merlin would stand beside no matter what.

He was obviously not equipped to resist _anything_ from Merlin, but what could he do? Gallantry was his duty, and if Eric had—if Merlin and Eric had—

"You really should restrain me somehow," Merlin said.

This was actual madness. "If you ask me that again, I'll sack you," Arthur gritted out.

"You'll unsack me tomorrow," Merlin said gaily. He had a look of unmitigated confidence.

"Anyway, do you imagine I'm hiding a coil of rope somewhere in my bedchamber?" Arthur said. "I assure you, I am not."

"Oh, right," said Merlin, and conjured a rope.

Arthur yelped and startled backwards so suddenly that his back smacked into one of his bedposts. "Merlin!"

"Hurry up, it could take effect any moment now."

"How is a rope _you_ conjured going to stop _your_ magic?" Arthur dutifully tied Merlin to a chair, and pretended he was somewhere else, far far away, like in a deep dark cave where no one would ever find him or speak to him or look at him again. "How did you even do that?"

"I honestly don't know," Merlin said. "Um, to both questions. Aren't you going to get your sword?"

"What would you have me do with it?" Arthur said gloomily. "I'm hardly going to skewer you."

"Get something you can knock me out with, then."

Arthur was indignant. "I'm not going to do that either!"

"You harass me and bully me all the time—"

"Excuse me!"

"—and the one time I'm actually inviting to do it, you—" A strange look came over Merlin's face. "Oh. There it is."

•

Of course, in a range of suitably impressive side effects, almost any one of which it would've been extremely heroic and enviable for him to have overcome, Merlin got stuck with _excessive sweating._

"This is revolting," he said.

"Quite," Arthur agreed. He was laughing—the nerve! The gall! It was unbelievable and shocking. It was disgustingly, appallingly, nauseatingly attractive. "I have to say, Merlin, I'm relieved you had the good sense to bind yourself, otherwise, however would I fend off this puddle you're creating?"

"I'll drip on your nice leather boots," Merlin threatened, and then remembered he'd put a charm on them so they'd be resistant to rain and other foul weather, which probably included hurricanes of sweat. "Bollocks."

Arthur was still smirking slightly, and observing Merlin with a mixture of delighted curiosity and unchecked disgust. "How long do you think this'll go on?"

"I don't think it's an exact science," Merlin said. He felt briefly morose. "I expect even the night screaming would've been better than this." It was rather disgusting, all told. It felt like all the water in his entire body had heard there was a fire, and was running for the exits. His hair was matted to his head, he smelled rank, and even sitting down, which felt like he'd spilled something damp and unappealing all over his lap and backside, was torment. Adding insult to injury was that this all occurred mere feet from Arthur's diabolical and extremely becoming face and nose.

"Alas, it's still daylight," Arthur said. "This is actually turning out to be a cracking afternoon."

"This could turn into bloodlust at any moment," Merlin said. "Or regular lust. And then you won't be laughing."

"No," Arthur said, and there it was again, a slight blush and a crack in his voice. With considerable and valorous effort, Merlin didn't read too much into it. Arthur coughed. "Anyway. Could we cool you down somehow?"

"We could try, I suppose. I could cast a charm, or—"

"Or we could throw you in the river," Arthur suggested. "Or I could take this bucket of cold water and we could dump it on you."

"I'm actually not even so uncomfortable," said Merlin hastily. "Anyway, that's our emergency supply, in case I catch fire."

Arthur looked out the window and smiled. It was a different smile than the smirk before; it was loose and warm. "Well, do let me know if I can help relieve your suffering," he said, in a sarcastic and lofty sort of voice, but it was belied by that look, which so plainly showed he meant it.

•

It couldn't have just stopped at sweating. No, not with Arthur's luck: beset on by all manner of evil beasts and good-looking dark-haired people, in constant peril at the hands of half-mad high priestesses and his own treacherous heart. It was ludicrous and unfair. Anything would've been better. Elevated bloodlust seemed elementary in comparison, even taking Merlin's magic into account.

He felt it immediately. It was almost unbearable; it didn't make him think or feel anything out of the ordinary, it was just an amplification of everything he thought and felt already, with a steady new undercurrent: a voice, an inviting voice, that suggested, _Do something about it._

 _I will not,_ Arthur told it firmly. And he wouldn't, he would never. Not like this if his life depended on it, and not any other way either, probably, because Merlin was—it wasn't his fault that Arthur was like this, and Arthur needn't burden him.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours, but couldn't have been longer than thirty minutes, as the sun started to get lower and lower in the sky. It was a small consolation that Merlin looked to be struggling hard against the effects as well, and then, abruptly, he wasn't.

"This is mad," Merlin said. "I'm not going to fight this, when I already—Arthur, I really fancy you."

The day's trials and tribulations were ever-multiplying. Arthur shut his eyes tight and pressed the heel of his hand to his brow, hard. "No, you don't," he said, willing every part of himself to be still and silent.

"No _you_ don't," Merlin said nonsensically. "I do! I'm not just saying it. Between the sweating and this, I haven't any face left to lose, so I just need you to know, or else I probably _will_ burst into flames."

Arthur kept his eyes closed. He was the one who needed to be restrained, he was the one who should be locked away or thrown in a river. Ban on magic this, ban on magic that—who could give a damn about it, really, when they should have been focusing on making it illegal to feel this way about another person. His chest was burning. He wondered if the spontaneous combustion was contagious. "I'm begging you, for once in your life, hold your tongue."

"I know you think this is the enchantment talking, and you're an idiot," Merlin said, his voice going a little shrill. Arthur opened his eyes and glared. He'd been right: this was far more lethally painful than snake venom. He wanted to scream or punch something in half, because what he actually wanted was to take two strides and take Merlin into his arms and into his bed and never, ever, ever let go. And he could not.

 _You could,_ the voice said. It was Merlin's voice, he realized abruptly. This was an evil spell indeed. _You could, and you should._

"You can't talk to me like that," Arthur said to the real Merlin, feeling his traitorous face heat up. "Please, just shut up."

•

Merlin was not going to shut up. He finally understood, watching Arthur's face screw up, and it was brilliant, like a clear shot of light that broke through the sparkly haze of love spell and made him feel like he was really, genuinely glowing. Arthur—teasing, imperious, pigheaded Arthur—actually fancied him. Foist him off, indeed. Arsehole. Merlin liked him so very, very much.

"I like you very, very much," Merlin said. "And it's got nothing to do with anything else, it's been going on for ages."

Arthur was looking at him with a guarded expression that clenched painfully at something in Merlin's chest. "Alright," he said. "Fine. I believe you. Now will you stop?"

Merlin looked down at his bindings. He could feel that this spell wasn't very strong, at least not stronger than his magic, because it was allowing him to think about how stupid this situation was. This was so incredibly stupid, and he'd been stupid to come here, and Arthur had been stupid to agree to help. But of course it had happened exactly like this. He was staying in Camelot for Arthur, it was destiny, and he was beginning to feel like there was hardly any point to adventure or mischief without him, so he had come straight here—who else was he going to tell, except Gaius? And who would Arthur volunteer before himself, for the people he cared about? It was all very ridiculous, and the most ridiculous part of it was how much he was sort of enjoying it, even the sweating, just to catch Arthur's cheer. Horrible, embarrassing misadventures turned to a laugh when you were stupidly in love.

 _You could say that last part aloud,_ said a suspiciously familiar and tempting voice in the back of his head.

Or perhaps the spell was more powerful than he had first thought.

 _You should probably dissolve your bindings,_ Arthur's voice advised, warmly.

Merlin blinked, and the rope disintegrated, and he stood up, and Arthur sprang up and immediately into defensive fighting position, which was a bit much. They faced off like that, staring at each other for a moment. "Would you just," Merlin started, but at that exact moment, the love enchantment evaporated, and Merlin burst into flames.

Well, it wasn't as bad as all that; the air _around_ him burst into flames, but he was perfectly alright, by dint of his sorcery or the spell, he didn't quite know. There was immediate action and a bit of fuss, but between Merlin's magic and Arthur's equally formidable water bucket, they spared themselves and most of the room. A bit of the bedspread was singed, and one of the bedposts and the backs of two chairs were badly blackened, but it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

They stood evaluating their work for a moment.

"That was," Arthur said at length, "an absolutely nightmarish day."

"I had a bit of a laugh," Merlin admitted.

Arthur's face contorted. "Sure," he said, "so did I. My belongings were destroyed by your sweat and magic fire. _Magic_ fire, in my room, where either of us easily could've been caught. Truly, a smashing success."

"I still really fancy you," Merlin said.

"Oh, God," Arthur said.

"I do," Merlin insisted. "I'm not under any spell, I'd know. Well, I hope I'd know—no, I would know."

"My confidence rises with your every word," Arthur said dryly, but he had sort of perked up a little.

Merlin turned to face him and couldn't help smiling. "Look, I'm saying, I'm glad it was you with me and not Sir Eric."

"Stop talking about Sir Eric," Arthur said. "Alright, I—suppose that I feel—something. As well. That you have expressed."

The sun had set. Merlin looked around the room, and candles lit by themselves, and a fire started in the hearth.

"Good lord," Arthur said, clutching a non-singed bedpost. "I support you, and all, but you really can't be doing that sort of thing in here." He was looking at Merlin in a sort of heart-wrenching way, like a terribly sad, besotted dog.

"You still don't get it, do you," Merlin said. "I love you! I've been pining horribly!"

"You've been pining horribly?" Arthur's expression was infused with a small helping of delight. Git. "I—take no pleasure in that, obviously."

"Obviously."

Arthur kept looking at him, and his expression was turning sort of suspicious again, so Merlin said, "It's not going to wear off." He watched Arthur's face carefully. "It's not, you have to understand. I think about you all the time. I care what you think of me, I care what happens to you. I dream about you—"

"Enough," Arthur said brokenly. "Come here."

Merlin took one half-step forward before Arthur, it seemed, could wait no longer, and grabbed him bodily by the shoulders and hauled him into a kiss. It wasn't a perfect kiss, but it was a great kiss, something that bards would probably sing about until the end of time, a kiss that could burn away winter, a kiss that sparked a dragon's fire in Merlin's heart.

"Right," he said, when they broke apart. "So _you've_ been pining horribly."

"You're sacked," Arthur said. "You're very evil."

Merlin kissed him again.

"I like you alright," Arthur said, a few minutes later, "but I swear, if you've got night screaming, you _are_ sleeping in the stables."

"No I'm not," Merlin said merrily, and he didn't.


End file.
